Online pranks

Hackers take over Twitter accounts for Burger King, Jeep

Published: February 19, 2013 

A Chrysler spokesman says someone hacked into the Jeep brand’s twitter account Tuesday afternoon, making false Tweets for about an hour until the company that handles its social media regained control.

The move was similar to an incident involving the Burger King restaurant chain on Monday – in which a hacker posted obscene messages and changed its profile picture to a McDonald’s logo.

It’s unclear if the two incidents are linked.

Hackers Tuesday posted that the Jeep brand had been sold to Cadillac because employees had been caught using pills. They also posted that there would be no more Jeep production.

Chrysler spokesman Ed Garsten says the company’s social media agency got help from Twitter to regain control of the account. He doesn’t think the brand name was damaged by the Tweets because most people know it was a prank.

In Monday’s hacking case, the tweets stopped after a little more than an hour, and Burger King said it had reached out to Twitter to suspend the account.

Late Monday, Burger King tweeted: “Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!”

Burger King, which usually tweets several times a week, typically does so to promote sales, or to ask questions such as how many bites it takes to eat a chicken nugget.

But just after noon on Monday, someone tweeted via Burger King’s account, “We just got sold to McDonalds!” They also changed the icon to McDonald’s golden arches.

Twitter said on Feb. 1 that cyber attackers may have stolen user names and passwords of 250,000 users. It said that it notified users of the breach.

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